By a ruling made on 20 April 2017, as follow-up to the public hearing of 19 April 2017, the Administrative Tribunal of Melun rejected all demands for interlocutory proceedings that we had initiated against the National Frequency Agency (ANFR) on 20 February 2017. The court considered that the requested measurements would be an obstacle to enforcement of an administrative decision (explicit decision of ANFR dated 19 December 2016 refusing the transmission of documents relating to measurements of the specific absorption rate (SAR) of 95 mobile phones tested) without establishing the existence of a serious and imminent danger.

The many arguments that we transmitted, originating almost entirely from the July 2016 report of the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES) and the Internet site of ANFR did not therefore convince the Court of the existence of a serious AND imminent danger. However, the choice of interlocutory proceedings was in our eyes all the more justified because the communication of the names of the manufacturers, models, and exceeded threshold levels of the 95 mobile phones tested by ANFR in near contact with the skin** would allow warning users, particularly the youngest ones, of the risks to their health. Would it not be expected that, in the case of automobiles and food, decisions regarding recalls and warnings were made while for mobile phones, manufacturers were exempt from these?

If ANFR gains some time with this court decision, it nevertheless remains that regarding transparency and ethics, and the issue of public health, the attitude of our national agency raises a great many questions, one of which is its relations with industry. And what about the latest revelations of ANFR, reproaching ANSES for having “unexpectedly” published the overall results of the measurements in its report “Exposure to Radiofrequencies and Children’s Health”.

Conscious of the magnitude of the public health issue, of the strength of forces involved, and the current discussion of new legal provisions regarding this issue, we are going to conduct an in-depth analysis of this ruling. This will enable us to identify, by 9 May 2017, the administrative and legal channels allowing the fastest possible communication to the public of the documents mentioned above and seeing more clearly the responsibilities of the various actors.

Our main objective is to preserve the health of tens of millions of French and European mobile phone users, particularly children, in an affair that, to us, is becoming more and more like Dieselgate.

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